Aircall Acquires New
Customers with HubSpot

Aircall is a leading cloud based phone system founded in 2014. Early on, they saw the benefit of building an integration with HubSpot as a way to provide a great product experience to shared customers. Two years after their founding, they became a HubSpot app partner.

The app proved to be popular with customers, and over time, HubSpot and Aircall formed a strong go-to-market relationship. Aircall was able to build brand equity, acquire new leads, and close more deals.  In 2022, HubSpot announced Aircall as a strategic partner and HubSpot Ventures made an investment in Aircall. 

Investing heavily in the HubSpot ecosystem was a key part of Aircall's journey, as they grew from new startup to a centaur with over $100 million in ARR.

Early Partners

Aircall was founded in Paris in 2014. At the time, businesses struggled with complex and expensive phone installments. Aircall decided to build a cloud-based system for calling that would be easy for businesses to set up and easy to use -- without huge bills. 

Once the product was built out, Aircall realized the importance of integrating with other systems so that businesses could see their call logs and insights in a centralized way. Businesses want to minimize the need to move data between their calling tool and their service or sales systems.

Aircall also understood the value of partnerships as a go-to-market strategy. As a company founded in France, partnering with a larger company with a strong brand like HubSpot enabled them to immediately establish brand equity in the North American market where businesses were not as familiar with their product.  

From early on, Aircall and HubSpot shared product goals of offering powerful functionality in a way that is easy to use. Because of this shared philosophy, customers using both apps have a seamless experience. As one customer wrote in their 5 star marketplace review of the integration, "It was so easy to install and integrate both products. They complement each other well."  

Going to Market Together

To ensure they were providing an excellent product experience, Aircall got their integration Certified by HubSpot. Certification entails a higher level of technical review and shows a continued commitment to providing shared customers with a better UX.

With a high-quality integration that helps customers using HubSpot's Sales and Service Hubs, it made sense for Aircall and HubSpot to spend more time talking to prospects and customers together about the joint value of both products.

Aircall and HubSpot were able to go to market together by co-marketing, listing each other in their respective app marketplaces, and by enabling each other's sales teams.

Successful Co-marketing 

Aircall and HubSpot joined forces on numerous co-marketing initiatives to attract new customers and drive integration installs. In addition to over 158,000 customers and 750,000 weekly active users of the HubSpot product, HubSpot has blogs and media that reach millions of people every month. By teaming up with HubSpot on co-marketing initiatives, app partners can connect with large audiences in a positive way.

Aircall collaborates with HubSpot on ebooks, webinars, and videos that attract new prospects and engage customers. The incredibly popular Sales Plan Template, for example, was launched in 2019 and continues to attract new prospects in 2023. As over half of HubSpot's customer base is outside the US and Aircall sells into many geographic regions, the Sales Plan Template was also translated and offered in Japanese, German, Spanish, and French.   

Working closely with HubSpot to go to market together resulted in more Aircall customers using HubSpot. 

"Working closely with HubSpot to go to market together resulted in 80% growth of HubSpot use in the Aircall customer base in 2022." 

HubSpot's App Marketplace gets over 900,000 monthly views and customers, users, and prospects discover Aircall's listing. Aircall receives daily leads from the App Marketplace, which, because of the close alignment between the two products and the company brands, close at a 71% rate.

With over 8,000 installs of the Aircall-HubSpot integration, Aircall and HubSpot decided to invest in their partnership further by offering discounts to their respective customers for the other product. 

Collaborating with HubSpot AEs

Aircall made it a priority to work closely with HubSpot Account Executives and respectfully built relationships across different AE teams. They focused on being supportive of HubSpot AEs' deals instead of just trying to close their own deals as quickly as possible. 

"Close to 100 HubSpot AEs have referred us business and that is because we know how to deliver value and be supportive of a sale, instead of getting in the way."

Louis Dumortier, Manager, Strategic Partnerships at Aircall

Megan Cull, who leads an upmarket sales team at Aircall, shared, "The way we view our relationship with HubSpot is that the partnership is more important than any individual deal in our pipeline. HubSpot is always the priority. We would never make HubSpot look bad to close a deal."

Being pushy or aggressive in networking with HubSpot AEs does not result in collaborative relationships and in fact is more likely to result in HubSpot reps wanting to work with a partner less.

Aircall understands that by being reliable, supportive, and helping HubSpot AEs meet their goals, they can build lasting relationships that close more deals for both sides.

Alexander Santangelo, who is a HubSpot Sales Manager for Canada, appreciates this way of collaborating. 

"The Aircall reps are helpful, knowledgeable, and good at pitching the integration. They don’t try to take over your deal. They are proactive and they enable. They are top of mind because they have built the relationship."

Alexander Santangelo, HubSpot Sales Manager

He also points out that having a strong integration and product is table stakes for collaborating with HubSpot AEs. Reps do not want to recommend a product their customers won't like.

"Aircall's leg up is that they have a good product -- no one has ever complained after I have recommended Aircall. On top of that, they build trust and they are top of mind because they have built the relationship. It feels like they have prioritized HubSpot as a key partner."

Shane Ryan, a HubSpot Solutions Engineer, echoed this thought, "I work with AEs on the more technical issues. Aircall is very accessible and really good at collaborating. They will always get on a call and do what they can to help our team sell. They will join prep conversations and spin up a Slack channel. Overall, they are phenomenal to work with."

Investing in being supportive of HubSpot AEs produces sustainable relationships where HubSpot AEs feel comfortable bringing an app partner into a deal when the app can address a customer need.

Aircall has seen the benefit of their partner-first approach. In addition to receiving many leads from AEs, Louis said, "When we support a HubSpot sale by showcasing how Aircall works, our win rates go through the roof and the ghosting rate goes down 15%. Prospects respond well to the integrated solution."

By investing in a strong HubSpot integration and going to market with HubSpot, Aircall has successfully grown together with HubSpot over the last six years. With a strategic investment by HubSpot Ventures in Aircall in late 2022,  the partnership will continue to fuel both companies' growth.  

Read more partner stories to discover other ways that partners have found success in the HubSpot ecosystem. Check out how RollWorks and QuotaPath grew with HubSpot.